


parachute

by anna_kat



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 08:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2461514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anna_kat/pseuds/anna_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt drabbles from tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. let them eat cake

**Author's Note:**

> batsonthebrain requested: "passive aggressive cooking competition"

They’re on a month-long surveillance assignment, all six of them packed into (luckily) a rather large house outside a small town.

The first night they get there, it’s actually two o’clock in the morning, and they pick up Chinese food to split before choosing their rooms and crashing into beds.

The next night, they go on a grocery run, and May volunteers for dinner duty. The following evenings find them ordering pizza, Coulson making fajitas, Skye making spaghetti and Fitz making something they all refuse to eat.

On a lazy Sunday night, Jemma volunteers to make dinner. She sends Coulson and Ward out to clean the balcony patio, and Skye and Fitz after them to set the table. Within the hour, she’s whipped up some kind of alfredo dish with Cajun chicken, a fresh salad, and homemade garlic bread. Everyone digs in instantly, sitting outside in the setting sun and the warm California breeze.

She barely gives them cool-down time before going into the house and returning with a tray of drinks and a platter of raspberry beignets. Fitz and Skye eat so many of them, they start to look nauseous.

Grant simultaneously feels impressed, competitive, and a little bit in love. (But no one knows about that, yet.)

He lets a week go by, and on the next Saturday, once he gets the all clear to wrap up his surveillance run, he takes over the kitchen. By dinner time, he turns out garlic chicken and couscous, and Baked Alaska as the finale.

Jemma’s first bite of dessert actually produces a low moan, and she covers her mouth with her hand, face red. She agrees with the rest of the team that the food was delicious, but Grant sees her eyes narrow at him for just a moment.

On Tuesday, with her assistance not needed that particular evening, Jemma spends the day in the kitchen making an enormous pot roast. She makes biscuits from scratch, feeds them all until they’re fit to burst, and then produces chocolate bread pudding.

When everyone expresses their enjoyment, it’s his eyes that narrow at her, and she just smirks at him from across the table and licks chocolate off her bottom lip.

It goes on like this for days. Smoked salmon, lemon gnocchi, risotto. Tiramisu, peach pie, lemon squares, gelato.

Their little game of trying to show each other up comes to an end when Coulson suggests they actually cook a meal collaboratively instead.

If they happen to have sex in the kitchen while everyone else is on surveillance, so be it.


	2. a bump in the road

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ilurked requested: “What do you mean you don’t know how to drive?”

_“What do you mean you don’t know how to drive?”_

 

Jemma shrugs slowly, looking down at the bar and circling her finger around the edge of her margarita glass. (Grant had watched her lick the salt from the rim of it earlier and had subsequently used all his control to not drag her somewhere private and have his way with her.)

He’d found her reading a book by the edge of the pool while Fitz and Skye tried to dunk each other in the shallow end, and had instead asked her to go down to the restaurant on the hotel’s first floor for a drink.

He realizes she’s starting to speak and he’s just been staring at the corner of her mouth where a little bit of margarita salt sat stubbornly.

“I suppose I just never had the time to learn. And then when I did have the time, it didn’t really matter.” She says, tilting her head to one side when she looks at him. Her hair falls away and her neck is arched and he’s had plenty to drink so he’s sort of wondering how the tender skin of her throat would look with a hickey nipped into it.

But he’s also supposed to be holding up his end of a conversation. Right. “You never had the time to learn how to operate a car?”

“I’ve been in and out of schools, universities, the Academy for most of my life. My time was being devoted to learning other things.” She’s got a little grin dancing around her features as she considers him in kind. “I know the basics, I suppose, the mechanics. I’m sure I could get a car somewhere in relative safety if I had to. I’ve just never actually… had to.”

Grant nods slowly, wondering what she’s thinking right now, aside from maybe what she’s saying. “I could teach you.”

Jemma smiles. It’s a perfectly normal, kind smile. That’s how he knows whatever he’s getting from her is in her eyes, not her smile. “I would like that.”

He nods slowly, gaze still roving from her eyes to her lips, down the curve of her neck. “Okay.”

Now her smile changes, one corner of her mouth (the corner where the salt lingers) quirks a little higher. Her lips are stained red from the margarita.

He decides he shouldn’t drink with her anymore.


	3. exit strategy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> saffrondawn requested: "Ward hears 'Parachute' by Ingrid Michaelson in the diner with Skye working on the hard drive."

Skye sits across from him in the little diner, fingers tapping the keyboard, foot tapping the floor. She’s nervous.

He can practically see it rising in her, and it makes his fingers itch where they rest on the table top. She’s not doing what she’s supposed to be doing, and she won’t let him get a look at whatever it is she’s trying to pull off.

A list of options rolls through his mind like ticker tape, and he weighs each one as quickly as possible. She hasn’t given him what he needs yet, and he can’t very well sweep her out of here the same way he swept her out of the safe house. There’s witnesses and she knows he’s been lying to her, he can see it on her face.

_“I don’t tell anyone about the way you hold my hand_

_I don’t tell anyone about the things that we have planned_

_I won’t tell anybody, won’t tell anybody_

_They wanna push me down, they wanna see you fall down…”_

All thoughts leave his head. The ticker tape, the warning signs, any plan he’d even started to form, it all disappears.

Skye’s saying something to him, but he can’t focus on her (he knows he should) when he hears Jemma humming the tune of this song.  _“It’s like this song was written just for you. From me.”_ Her voice says in his head, the way it did when she whispered those words to him in the quiet of her bunk.  _“You’re gonna catch me if I fall down, right?”_

The laptop Skye’s been working on turns on the table and she’s showing him his own picture on the screen.

He’s out of time and he hasn’t got a parachute.


	4. state of the union

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> batsonthebrain requested: "Relationship hallmarks: denial, flirting, dating, drawers, sharing a space, proposal, and marriage."

It’s terribly easy for her to dislike Grant Ward. In the beginning, anyway.

She rolls her eyes when he leaves the room (or when he’s still in the room, really) and she bickers with him when the point isn’t entirely relative, just… relatively annoying.  Fitz mentions pulling pigtails or something equally absurd, and she spends the next fifteen minutes listing why Grant Ward is an insufferable Special Ops meathead.

Skye elbows the biochemist in the ribs. “Kind of a hunk, though, huh Simmons?”

Jemma can hear her mother telling her not to roll her eyes so often, lest they get stuck that way, but she does it anyway. “Not any kind of redemption, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, he’s obviously an attractive specimen, there’s not much debate there, I actually think he might be mathematically perfect-”

Fitz and Skye erupt into giggles.

“Oh, come off it!” She snaps, turning out of the lab and heading for the stairs, trying to hide the pink blush that is rapidly covering her cheeks and neck.

She’s entirely ashamed to say her denial only lasts a couple of months. She’s not sure how many, really, because the denial and the flirting sort of start to blur together. It starts because it seems to her like it’ll be something to irritate him, make him just a touch uncomfortable in her presence. (She kind of likes it when he squirms.)

She had not expected him to flirt back.

Of course, much to the rest of the team’s agitation, the flirting stage drags on far longer than the denial. It gets to the point where everyone else will leave if Ward and Simmons end up in a room together.

“Jesus, Jemma, I’m going to start carrying a water bottle around to squirt you with.” Fitz grumbles when Grant finally leaves the lab. “Can’t you just jump him and be done with it?”

Jemma rolls her eyes. “It’s just flirting Fitz, don’t be crass. It’s just how we interact at this point in our relationship, nothing else.” She starts to line up a row of beakers on the counter.

“Well, move on to the next point, will you?”

She rolls her eyes and continues with her work.

The dating comes next, way way way  _way_  next (“oh my god, you’re doing it before all of us have died of old age”) and it’s entirely different than she’d expected. It’s harder, scarier, a lot more work.

They argue a lot, which probably could’ve been predicted beforehand. Sometimes it lasts an hour, sometimes it lasts a few days. Once, they go three weeks without getting near each other.

When he leans against the doorway to watch her clean the kitchen counters (for the third time), it’s almost one o’clock in the morning. “You, uh… you coming to bed? It’s really late, and, you should… you know, probably get some rest.”

She raises her eyebrows when she turns to him. “Oh? I thought I was the overbearing one.”

Grant pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jem, I’m sorry. I was tired and irritated, and I was wrong to take it out on you.” She keeps scrubbing at the countertop, so he moves behind her, gently stilling her movements by placing his hand over hers. “I’m sorry. Please, will you come to bed?”

She’s tired of sleeping alone in her bunk and she’s missing him so badly it feels like a stomachache, so she tangles her fingers with his and leads him to his bunk. (She pretends like it’s a great inconvenience to her to do so, pretends like she’s grumpy with him still. Then he lies beside her and leaves soft little kisses all over her face until she hums happily.)

On their furlough, she takes him to the apartment she keeps in New York. Fitz bids them goodbye in the hallway and requests that they keep the volume down as he walks to his apartment in giggles.

Jemma grumbles and takes Grant inside, shows him each little room.

In the bedroom, she sits on the end of the bed and points him to her dresser. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be here when I panty-raid your room.” She kicks her foot out to push against his hip, and he laughs and opens the top drawer anyway. “Um. This is empty, J. I think you’ve been robbed.”

Another roll of her eyes ( _they’re going to get stuck that way, young lady_ ) and another poke to his hip, and she smiles sort of shyly. “I emptied it, you lovely fool. For you. To put things in, your things. Here.”

He stands up and faces her. “Really?”

“Really. You brought some things with you, didn’t you? Now you have a whole drawer to yourself.”

She’s barely finished her sentence before he’s heading for the hall to find his things. He comes back into the bedroom and opens the drawer, digging through his bag, when he feels her foot against his back yet again. He looks over his shoulder to find her leaned back on her elbows. She bites her lip, waggles her eyebrows, and a second later he’s tackling her to the mattress.

He makes eight different proposal plans. At least. Fitz helps with three of them, Skye helps with one. None of them are good enough, he doesn’t think he’ll ever come up with a proposal good enough for her.

Coulson tries to help, even May offers some advice. (“You’re over thinking it. Calm the hell down and just ask her.”)

In the end, it sort of slips out of his mouth without him meaning it to, which is sort of unfortunately fitting.

They’re in their apartment (it’s theirs now, he loves it), it’s almost noon on a Saturday, and they haven’t even thought of getting out of bed. He’s stretched out on his front, draped across her legs and hips, chin resting on her belly.

They’ve been thumb-wrestling for almost twenty minutes, and her hair is sleep-tangled, cheeks rosy. He lets her pin his thumb and do her victory cheer, and then he reaches for her left hand. He holds onto her ring finger, pulls it close so he can press his lips to the second knuckle.

When her eyebrows furrow together, he blurts out, “Will you marry me, Jem?”

“What?” She asks, spluttering and coughing just a bit. She clears her throat and touches her fingertips to his face. “What did you say?”

His mouth opens and closes for a solid minute and a half. “I said… something jelly bean, man?”

Her head tilts down a bit. “Did you?”

She’s giving him an out. “Uh. No. No, I asked if you’d marry me.”

“Are you sure?”

He rolls his eyes now. “If you don’t answer, I’m going to take the ring back.”

“Oh, right. An answer, an answer… Do I want to marry Grant Ward?” She puts a finger to her chin like she’s thinking very hard. (He knows that’s not what she looks like when she’s thinking.) “Do I want to marry Grant Ward?”

He hauls himself up and then falls across her, kissing her over and over while he feels her mumble, “Of course I want to marry you, you moron.”


	5. moral hazard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ilurked requested: "Everything I’ve done, all the blood on my hands, I did them so that you won’t have to."

It’s some cruel trick of fate that she’s the one to find him. It has to be.

She wasn’t even supposed to be on her own, was supposed to stay close to Trip or Coulson or May at all times. But she didn’t listen, like always, saw more importance in chasing after the guy that had bashed Fitz in the head.

She gets turned around in all the hallways, loses sight of her intended target. She ends up outside some kind of large conference room, the glass wall letting her see inside. Before she even thinks twice about it, she fires a shot through the glass and watches Grant Ward lift his gun at her all too calmly from inside.

The recoil surprises her a bit but she keeps it trained on him, tries to blink the tears from her eyes as she stares him down.

“Go back upstairs.” He says quietly, tipping his head in the direction she’d come from. “They’re going to be worrying about you, if they haven’t started already.”

His concern, if it’s even real, makes her angry. She’s  _so very angry._  “I want you to tell me why you did it.”

“Go upstairs, Dr. Simmons.” And goodness, does that feel like rubbing salt into her already gaping wound. When was the last time he called her by her last name? Had he  _ever_  called her ‘doctor’ before?

She despises the way her voice cracks. It makes her hate herself a little bit more. “Why did you do it? Why did you hurt them that way? Break their trust?” She wants to focus on the pain of her team, because she wants to pretend like she’s unscathed. Like he couldn’t hurt her.

“I was on a mission.” He says, tone still even but the words coming out slowly, as though he’s trying not to choke on them. She hopes he does. “I did what I had to do.”

They both have a gun raised. She wonders if he’d actually shoot her. She wonders if she could shoot him.

“You  _faked_  everything. You  _lied_. To Coulson and May, and Fitz and Skye. You earned the trust and care of people who don’t give it away easily, and then you tore it to pieces and blindsided them. With a _smile_.” She’s fine, she’s fine,  _finefinefine_.

Something on the monitor behind him beeps. He’s watching her. “Do you know how much they want you? What they have in the plans to get you to this side? What they’ll do? They can protect you, help you, give you-”

“Go to hell, Grant Ward.” She snarls.

“You don’t have to go down with Coulson, with SHIELD, you can still be a scientist, you can make a difference-” There’s an edge of desperation creeping into his voice, and she’s just _angryconfusedbrokenhearted_.

“I would never-”

“I know!” He bellows suddenly, and he sounds so wrecked that she can’t think for a moment. “I know, I know, I know you wouldn’t, that’s why I did this!”

She swallows roughly. “What?”

His eyebrows furrow together, his forehead creased and eyes wide. He looks on the verge of hysterics and it’s not helping her confusion go away. “ _Everything I’ve done, all the blood on my hands, I did them so that you won’t have to!”_

She can’t breathe. Her lungs are gasping, but she can’t help them.

His hands are shaking around his gun. Hers aren’t. (Could she shoot him? Could she do it?)

“Go.” He spits quietly, and his face has changed again. Unforgiving and distant, and so very different than the man she knew, the man she fell in love with. “Get out of here!”

She’s found him, she has him alone, he hasn’t got any kind of back-up. She has a gun on him. She could take him down, she could do what they’ve been trying to do for weeks. He’s right there.

_“Get out of here, Jemma!”_

She turns and runs.


	6. parental discretion advised

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: "Can you do a Drabble on the children see daddy using his combat skills on someone or something? I need fluff and good Ward Fics right now."

Jemma keeps trying to herd the children around the corner, keeps trying to cover their ears and their eyes and turn them away.

Hadley is gripping her mother’s leg like she’s afraid she’ll be grabbed, Simon seems torn between cheering and obeying instructions, and Grace’s attention is practically glued to what’s happening in front of her.

“Grant Douglas, this is entirely out of control!” Jemma hollers, simultaneously petting Hadley’s hair down and trying to pull on Grace’s elbow.

Her husband brings his foot down on the back of another one of the four men that practically jumped him. “I told you Rio was not a good place for me to be!”

“This is not what I thought you meant!”

There are only two hulking men left, and after head-butting one of them, Grant braces himself for the other. “Grace Ward, close your eyes right now!”

After the sounds of a brief scuffle, his family creeps around the corner again.

Jemma’s arms are crossed over her chest, mouth set in a thin line. “I feel as though ‘Rio’s not the best place’ was not enough of an explanation.”

Grant scratches the back of his neck and makes a mental note to find the big quilt for the couch when they get home.


	7. react to contact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mouseinscrubs requested: "'The emotional dam finally breaks' - I'd really love for Jemma to finally deal with the fact that Ward is Hydra, because everyone but her has... needless to say that she must have feelings about him actually throwing her out of the plane instead of catching her if she falls, like he promised before."

They’re sinking to the bottom of the ocean. They’re going to suffocate or they’re going to drown, and god,  _Fitz doesn’t deserve to go like this_.

She doesn’t realize she’s lost control of herself until he’s kneeling in front of where she’s curled up in the corner. “Jemma.” He puts one hand on the back of her neck, pulling her close until their foreheads touch. “Jemma, you have to breathe. Please, you have to calm down.”

She can’t do it. She can hear him, knows in some part of her brain that he’s right. She’s hyperventilating. The pod is rocking back and forth, her stomach lurching along with it, her lungs gasping, hands shaking, head spinning. She can’t breathe.

“Jemma.” He whispers again.

Her eyes are closed. She wonders if his are. Her best friend, her brother, her other half.  _Her poor, sweet, brilliant Leo._ “I’m so sorry.” She gasps, the words choppy and rough like the ocean outside.

His thumb brushes along her cheek and he sounds a little breathless too. “What?  _Why?_ ”

She squeezes her eyes shut tighter, arms wound around herself. “I-I should’ve found a s-safer place to hide, or j-just let him take me, or left when Coul-Coulson told us to.” She lets out a panicked groan. Her throat might be closing up. Her ribs collapsing, her bones shattering from the inside. “I keep trying to do th-the right thing, b-be brave, and I just get us in-into trouble, Fitz, I’m so sorry.”

He’s pressing his forehead harder into hers. It should probably hurt, but that doesn’t really matter now. “Oh, Jemma. Jemma, Jemma, no.  _No_.” He’s making a pained sound that sort of echoes the one she made earlier. He kisses her forehead.

“I don’t know who I am anymore! I d-don’t. Everything fell apart, it went to hell. I just wanted to be br-brave and be a good agent, and now it doesn’t even m-matter.” Her nails are probably leaving marks on her knees despite the denim of her jeans. “We trusted him. I trusted him. You don’t deserve this, Fitz. You’re so w-wonderful, you’re a gift, a precious one, and I’m so sorry I brought us here. We should’ve stayed in the l-lab, I’m sorry.”

Under different circumstances, he would’ve scoffed at her calling him ‘precious’, shirked her touch like an embarrassed little brother.

He doesn’t do that now.

She’s shaking with a lack of decent breaths, with aching, heaving sobs. “He promised he would catch me, Fitz.”

He doesn’t move his hand from the back of her neck, just sits down beside her, using his grip to tug her into his side. His other arm goes around her shoulders and he holds her close. “I know, Jem.” He whispers, kissing the top of her head. “I know.”

They’re in a box, sinking into the ocean, curled together. She cries for him, and she cries for herself, and she cries for the man who’d broken his promise.


	8. the hard part

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drjemmanugent requested: "I have this in mind: After being willingly caught, Ward is asking for redemption. The only hope he gets, is from Jemma. Do you think you can make this possible?"

By the time all was said and done, he’d needed patching up, and he wouldn’t let anyone but her come anywhere near him with medical supplies.

They’re back on the grounded Bus, though she’s not sure if they’re going to stay. She’s not sure she’ll be able to be airborne again, really. Her night terrors and panic attacks are bad enough as it is.

She swallows slowly as she looks at him. It’s a strange phenomenon, she thinks, that she’s afraid of many things after all of this, but even after watching him eject them out of the plane, she finds that she doesn’t believe he’ll hurt her now.

The rest of the team is gathered on the ramp, watching intently, waiting for an excuse to move closer, protect her.

Jemma isn’t afraid of him.

“You don’t have to help me.” He says, his voice rough and low. He won’t meet her eyes.

It’s deathly quiet, no voices to be heard other than his. Everyone else is listening like she is. “You a-asked-” She pauses, hating the sudden stutter in her words. “You asked for me.”

He slouches even more, head down, like he’s ashamed of doing such. “I didn’t think you’d actually come. You don’t have to help me.”

She starts to unpack her supplies. “You wouldn’t let the medics tend to you. And you need tending to, Ward, you’re very injured.”

He says nothing, just shrugs one shoulder until it makes him wince.

“No.” She snaps her fingers in front of his face, a slight sense of satisfaction nestling in her stomach when his widened eyes finally glance up. “That’s not how this works. You won’t fix this by punishing yourself, that’s not what we want. That’s not what I want from you. Keeping yourself in pain, in shame, regret, that won’t make us forgive you.” She refuses to look away from him. “Penance and redemption are not the same thing, Ward.”

“I’m not looking for redemption.”

Picking up a cotton swab, she shakes her head. “Well, you better start.”

He says nothing, but his eyes meet hers and he doesn’t look away once while she bandages him up.


End file.
